About 10 people in New Mexico need a new heart as of Friday, but no hospitals in the state perform those transplants.

That forced a Rio Rancho middle school teacher, Christina Tucker, to go to great lengths for a new heart. Now, she has one.

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"I was scared," she said. "I was really, really scared having to think about the next step and what I was going to have to go through."

Her health began to decline in 2013. Tucker was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, a genetic disease that results in the thickening of the heart muscle, according to our media partners at the Albuquerque Journal.

She ended up turning to Baylor Scott and White, in Dallas, Texas, where she was finally put on a waiting list.

But she was told she'd have to be at the hospital as soon as her new heart became available.

"It's surreal knowing that you have to be so far away to get the type of service and care that I needed," she said.

That fact alone forced Tucker to have a private jet on standby at the Sunport for weeks, ready for fly at moment's notice once she got the call for a new heart. On April 30, that happened.

“I started crying, but I knew it was the right thing to do,” she said.

After hours of operation, she got the new heart and is on the road to recovery. But it’s a road she won’t travel alone. Her students at Eagle Ridge Middle School have supported her all the way.

They surprised her at the hospital this week via Skype, a gesture Tucker will cherish as she pushes to get back home with a stronger beat in her chest.

“I want to start living my life,” she said. “I want to start doing the things I’ve never done before. And I’m going to be back to work eventually. I'm going to be doing the things I was meant to be doing.”